Student Works Symposium

I found the Student Works Symposium to be pretty interesting. I think the project that caught my attention the most was the project on torture. The project examined the practice of torture, looking at its efficacy, and other consequences. We had just talked about the subject in my History of Human Rights class, so it was cool to see the argument in another setting. The project was arguing against torture, emphasizing that the typical negative consequences of torture far outweigh the benefits. I agree with this assessment wholeheartedly. Torture can never be an effective, positive activity, because of its very nature; by condoning violence in our government, we help to legitimize violence as an effective policy tool. This is so inherently dangerous- violence is not something that is well controlled or managed in our world; violence tends to continue escalating until a point of abject, pointless violence emerges. Violence is not constructive in anyway, and by condoning it in our government, we are setting a deadly precedent for the rest of the world to follow. Also, I think that if we are ever going to reach a peaceful world, we must start stamping out violence. Many people construct a means-ends argument for why torture is acceptable (lose one save hundreds etc.), but this seems to be such a myopic view of our world. By using this argument, one is still placing oneself within the system, they are still part of the problem; we need to learn to remove ourselves from the system of violence, and start tying establishing different ideals in people’s minds, regarding violence.

            I know that I’m sorta ranting about violence a lot in these blog entries, but honestly, I cannot even begin to explain how important I think this subject is, and how much attention it needs from everyone. It’s time that we stop just addressing the symptoms of violence and start addressing the root causes; only by doing that will we be able to rewire violence’s role in our world. We need to watch where we get involved in the world, and for what reasons, so as to not harbor violent sentiments abroad, if they are avoidable. Also, we need to focus on the problem of poverty in our own country to address the problem of gang violence and poverty related violence.

            Overall, I found the Student Works Symposium to be interesting, and the food was delicious. I really like that there is a space for students to share their ideas like this, and I think it is a great opportunity for those involved.